Dr.
Helen Brooke Taussig, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is
considered
the founder of pediatric cardiology. She received her
baccalaureate
degree in 1921 from the University of California. Later, after
being
told that a woman could not earn a degree from the Harvard School of
Public
Health, she entered the Boston University Medical School. She
transferred
two years later to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
from
which she graduated in 1927.

Denied an internship in medicine at Johns Hopkins
University Hospital
because another woman from her class had already been accepted, Taussig
accepted an internship in pediatrics. In 1930, she was made head
of the Cardiac Clinic in the Harriet Lane Home of Johns Hopkins.
She retired from there as physician-in-charge in 1963.

In 1944, Taussig and Dr. Alfred Blalock, a Johns Hopkins
surgeon,
developed the famous operation to alleviate the "blue baby"
syndrome.
The "blue baby syndrome" is a condition in which a child is born with a
congenital heart defect that results in a bluish tinge to the skin
because
too little blood passes from the heart to the lungs. Prior to the
development of this operation, the condition almost always meant a life
of severely restricted activity and an early death.

It was also in her capacity as a pediatric cardiologist
that Taussig
began investigating and alerting the public to the dangers of the drug
Thalidomide.

Taussig amassed an impressive list of firsts. In
1959, she
became the first woman to be made a full professor at the Johns Hopkins
Medical School. In 1965, she became the first woman president of
the American Heart Association. In 1972, she was named the first
woman Master in the American College of Physicians. In 1973, she
was among the first 20 women in the United States to be inducted into
the
Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. In addition, she
was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed
by
the American government, in 1964.